Click MISS AMERICA DALLAS FINALS by Thomas Keske.
Click. HOW TO BE A WHISTLEBLOWER AND KEEP YOUR JOB.
Click. TRIBAL COALITION, INCLUDING CABAZONS, MAY PURCHASE LAND TO SAVE HERITAGE.
Click. COLOMBIA DOLLAR FACTORY BUSTED.
By © 2000
The Desert Sun
November 17th, 2000
PALM SPRINGS -- A coalition of desert-based American Indian tribes is working to take back something they already consider their own -- the land.
Representatives from the Chemehuevis, Serrano, Cahuilla, Hualapai and Paiute tribes of California and Arizona met here Thursday to discuss purchasing land that is culturally and spiritually significant to American Indians and how to infuse native beliefs into mainstream environmental policy.
“Now, it is time to take back some of these lands,” said William Callaway, a member of the Cabazon Band of Mission Indians near Indio, “to save our land, our legacy, our cultural ways.”
The gathering is the first of its kind for the Native American Land Conservancy. The talks continue through today, with a field trip on Saturday to Old Woman Mountains, east of Joshua Tree National Park.
Organized in 1997 on the Coachella-area reservation of the Twenty-Nine Palms Band of Mission Indians, the group hopes to thwart the destruction of land features it considers sacred to American Indians.
The group was involved in purchasing land from logging interests in northern Washington that includes a redwood forest. But its primary concern is the desert Southwest.
“Our lands extended thousands of miles,” Richard Milanovich, chairman of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, said of life in the Coachella Valley and surrounding areas before European settlement. “We lost what we had because they wanted it.”
Tribal leaders and native environmentalists plan to begin by targeting land they feel is threatened in the Colorado and Mojave deserts.
Conservancy organizers also hope to assist Indians’ efforts to preserve oral tradition through language and song.
“Culture is one of the biggest things we’ve lost,” said Joe Benitez, a Cabazon elder. “We need to have our elders ... teach their children the values of our culture.”
But even as American Indians everywhere are stepping up efforts to assert sovereign rights, incorporating tribal spiritual beliefs into off-reservation land-use strategies remains a tough sell to environmental policymakers.
“That is one of the hardest areas -- the clash of science and culture,” said Michael Kellner, environmental resources manager for the Agua Caliente. “It is just a matter of ... being able to see both sides.”
Milanovich cited the Agua Caliente’s role as one of the managers of the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument as an example of increased participation by American Indians.
Jim Kenna, Palm Springs and south coast field manager for the Bureau of Land Management, called the tribe’s role in the monument “groundbreaking.”
For the first time with a national monument, a tribe has equal standing with the other governments who manage the area, Kenna said.
Environmentalists said local tribes continue to be good land stewards, but added that native land practices don’t always fit into mainstream environmentalism.
Jeff Morgan, local vice chairman for The Tahquitz Group of the Sierra Club, said the national club is “totally opposed” to some native practices, such as whale hunting in the Pacific Northwest, or some Arizona Indians’ methods of gathering eagle feathers for religious purposes.
“These things, I don’t think there will ever be any agreement,” he said. “It is a very broad issue.”
Kellner said the perception that American Indian tribes do not honor environmental laws or construction codes when building on reservations also colors the public’s opinion of native environmentalism.
“Most people think we just go out and build a casino ... without any agreements whatsoever,” Kellner said. “That is a problem that happens all the time.”
He encouraged tribes to cooperate with other local governments to sign zoning agreements and to remind their neighbors that federal environmental laws include reservations.
Mary Belardo, chairwoman of the Torres-Martinez Band of Desert Cahuilla Indians, said misperceptions about native use of endangered species is an example of why American Indians should speak up on environmental policy.
“It is different if we get a whaler that is only catching whales for profit. It is sacred for (American Indians) that do that. Everything is done the right way,” Belardo said. “I understand why the non-Indian world would have difficulty feeling that. But it doesn’t make it right.”
Colombia dollar factory busted
Counterfeiters cranked out millions in phony bills
Gen. Alfonso Arellano of the Colombian National Police, examines counterfeit
U.S. dollars near the town of Versalles on Thursday.
ASSOCIATED PRESS © 2000
VERSALLES, Colombia, Nov. 18 - Its entrance hidden in a thick grove of banana trees, criminals in an underground room cranked out millions of counterfeit U.S. dollars - possibly more than $1 billion - before police working with the U.S. Secret Service cracked the biggest-ever counterfeiting operation in Colombia.
DISPLAYING INGENUITY and daring, the counterfeiters dug out the room in a mountainside of the verdant Andes of western Colombia, lined its walls with cinderblock and brought in fluorescent lighting and a printing press. It all ended Thursday with a bust that highlights a problem in a country better known for drug trafficking. According to the U.S. Embassy, one-third of counterfeit money circulating in the United States is made in Colombia.
Some $22 million in Colombian-made counterfeit dollars have been seized in the United States since 1985.
"This, unfortunately, is a national talent, because these are self-trained counterfeiters who produce (money) with a great degree of perfection," national police Gen. Alfonso Arellano said.
Anyone passing within a few feet of the banana trees in the isolated farming and coffee-growing region would have no way of knowing that a multimillion-dollar cottage industry - and a subterranean one at that - was in operation.
Journalists flown to the site aboard police helicopters late Thursday, within hours of the room's discovery, saw $3 million in bogus bills lying in stacks on tables and hanging by clips from string stretched across the 15-by-20-foot room. Cans of ink and dye stood on shelves mounted on the walls. Metal plates from which the bills were imprinted were
scattered on tables.
Watch a selection of NBC News reports on the U.S. war against Colombia's drug cartels.
A policeman turned on the black printing press, which clanked into life and began spitting out sheets of $100 bills. A portable fan provided ventilation for the humid room.
"Everything you need to make dollars is here," said Arellano, the police general. "And this room, which is like a bunker, was built with sophisticated engineering techniques."
A task force of 100 Colombian police, assisted by U.S. Secret Service agents, spent a year and a half trying to find the moneymaking factory and finally discovered it after infiltrating undercover officers into the counterfeiting gang, Arellano said Friday.
When heavily armed police swooped in on Thursday, they found one man, Gerardo Ardila, in the underground room and arrested him, Arellano said. Ardila was believed to be a lower-level worker.
Authorities were searching for the alleged mastermind, Ramiro Sepulveda, a previously convicted Colombian counterfeiter. U.S. Secret Service agents have been tracking him for 20 years.
Sepulveda got out of jail six months ago, following a 1998 arrest for counterfeiting U.S., Spanish and Tahitian currency, a Secret Service agent said on condition of anonymity. He said Sepulveda was considered "a craftsman" and one of Colombia's top currency counterfeiters.
The Secret Service traced phony bills circulating in the United States back to the Colombian operation, the agent said.
The underground operation was capable of printing $3 million per week and had probably been doing so for about 10 years - producing more than 1 billion bogus dollars, Arellano said. The Secret Service agent said the dollar factory appears to have been operating for at least two years.
The bills, in denominations of 100s, 50s and 20s, look genuine at first glance. But anyone familiar with U.S. currency can see on closer inspection that something is wrong. The texture of the paper doesn't feel right - it's slightly glossy - and the printing looks fake.
Police said much of the bogus money was probably destined for neighboring Ecuador, which officially switched to the dollar in September as the country's official currency. Ecuadorean officials had predicted counterfeit dollars from Colombia would flood Ecuador because many locals would not be able to recognize fake bills.
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